How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

February 28, 2008

During our Foxtrot class, Lora, the instructor, talked about how dancing usually is looked upon as a way for couples to come closer together. But it doesn't always work out that way, she said.

If a man and a woman are having problems before they begin learning ballroom dancing, whatever strains exist in their relationship are going to brought to the fore on the dance floor.

Laurel and I have been taking dance classes for just two years. But already we've seen a bunch of different approaches couples use when the moves aren't flowing like they should.

Laughter. The preferred response to a stumble, trip, collision, or any other of the myriad mis-steps that are endemic to dancing, no matter how good you are. If a couple can't laugh at themselves, dancing is going to be more frustrating than fun.

Discussion. After the laughing dies down, you've still got to figure out the reason for what's going awry. Talking it over sometimes is necessary if one person or the other doesn't blurt out an immediate "Sorry, I messed up!"

Blame. If self-criticism is lacking, some dance students aren't shy about placing the blame where it belongs: on their partner. This can be done in either a light-hearted or heavy-handed manner. A "What was that all about?" is fine (I hear it all the time). Demeaning your partner isn't.

Argument. The dark side of discussion. Lora said she's seen couples go at it during a class, bringing to the dance floor the same relationship crap that happens at home.

Once, she said, a man stormed out the door in the middle of a session. The couple never came back. Later she learned that they'd gotten a divorce.

Their marriage counselor had suggested they take dance lessons. Not a good idea. Partner dancing is just going to bring out communication problems in a new setting. It won't do much, if anything, to help a couple deal with the problems.

However, if a man and woman are just normally dysfunctional –like we all are at times – ballroom dancing is going to bring them closer together. That's been my experience, at least.

I always feel better after a dance class or practice session. And not just in the way I feel good after other sorts of exercise. There's another dimension to dancing: your partner.

And the music, of course. So you've got to adjust yourself to two other entities that aren't you – the melodies entering your ears and the person in your arms.

Control issues soon surface under these circumstances. In ballroom dancing the man leads and the woman follows. Lora, our instructor, likes to say to the men:

Guys, when you step on the hard wood, you're in charge. You're holding the remote control. You're driving the car. When you leave class and step back on the carpet, everything goes back to normal.

Normally. But if a couple is butting horns with each other, it's going to be really tough for the man to take charge and lead, and for the woman to let go and follow. Dissention, and maybe even divorce, can follow.

This smacks of the Bible Belt, not the Live Green and Mainline Lattes Belt. Deeply disturbing.

Today Oregonian columnist Margie Boulé had a follow-up. In "Atheists run up against 'last bias'" she points out that Americans say they'll vote for all sorts of presidential candidates, but not someone who fails to profess a belief in God.

A recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup found that Americans are overwhelmingly willing to vote for a presidential candidate who is an African American, a woman, a Catholic or a Latino. A solid majority would vote for a candidate who is Mormon, who is a homosexual, who has been married three times or who is 72 years old. The only category that did not break 50 percent? Atheists.

I have some friends who visit Europe regularly. They tell me that there it would be almost inconceivable for a politician to make his or her belief in God a campaign issue. It just doesn't come up. But here, an admitted unbeliever probably couldn't be elected to a major office. This isn't something the United States should be proud of. It's a defect, not a virtue.

The Elks are a good example of how religion contributes to hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness, not morality. The Elks web site claims that they stand for "the principles of Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity." But their charity and brotherly love stops if an elderly woman says she doesn't believe in God.

Crazy. Apparently Billie Sieg would have been acceptable to the Elks if she'd lied and told them that she was a believer. But she was honest. Boulé writes:

Oh, it's not like she stands on street corners, trying to persuade others that God does not exist. She's a quiet atheist. "In today's world a belief in God can take a lot of forms. I happen to be an unbeliever in supernatural deities, but I do believe in Mother Nature" and the holiness of "the world around us."

Sieg sounds like a Buddhist or Taoist to me. I suspect that if she'd responded to the Elks interviewer, "I believe in the god of Buddhism," she'd be enjoying the social activities in the lodge now.

Religious discrimination, after all, is a no-no in American culture. Unless someone doesn't believe in a traditional religion at all. Then it's fine to discriminate against them.

Someday, and that day can't come soon enough for me, this attitude will be seen as the pre-scientific relic of mythology that it is. A-theists are just people who don't see any evidence for a demonstrably unseen God.

Unicorns also are unseen. So a-unicornists are ubiquitous. As are a-fairyists and a-Big Footists.

However, Elks Lodges don't bar the door to people who say they don't believe in unicorns, fairies, and Big Foot – because these entities aren't revered by the majority of Americans.

God also likely is non-existent. At least, there's no proof of God's existence, which puts the supreme deity in the same epistemological class as fairies. Something which makes people feel good, but lacks standing in objective reality.

So we all should bow down to the courageous believers in truth like Billie Sieg and Sylvia Benner who refuse to accept religious absurdities just because they're the majority opinion.

Majorities often are wrong. At one time almost everyone used to believe that the Earth was flat, slavery was justified, and women were second-class citizens.

Before too long students will read in history books about the not-so-good old days when citizens of the United States were discriminated against because they didn't believe in God. And they'll think, How could this ever have happened? What were they thinking?

Oh, yeah. Ohio is going to go for Obama now. Former Ohio State basketball star Greg Oden is saying, "Vote for Barack."

This also should guarantee that Oregon ends up adding to Obama's substantial delegate lead, since rookie (and injured) Oden is the change that fans are expecting will return the Trail Blazers to playoff glory (or at least, just the playoffs).

And Obama is the best bet to do the same for the United States. Not a slam dunk, but the point spread is way in his favor.

February 24, 2008

Pretty clearly, Hillary Clinton's campaign is sinking. If she doesn't have the support of female middle-aged Democratic activists, I think she's done for.

Since I'm for Obama, last night it was music to my ears when a friend told me about this informal poll of a group of women who get together regularly to talk about politics and whatever.

She was surprised that Obama was the almost unanimous candidate of choice, since these women had been looking forward to a female presidency for so long.

But Obama's electability, personality, and potential to pull our divided country together overcame their feminist predilections. And that bodes well for both Obama and the Democratic Party.

I rarely agree with Robert Novak, the guy who outed Valerie Plame. However, his call for someone to tell Hillary, "It's over," rings true to me. I also agree that she'd be a much weaker opponent of McCain than Obama would.

Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the "perfect" candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.

Yes, it seems like it's just a matter of time. And that time should come sooner rather than later.

February 22, 2008

Finally! The man who pretended to be Oregon's state climatologist, even though no such position existed, is retiring.

Now George Taylor can pretend to be a fake something else, rather than deceiving the public about both global climate change and his qualifications to speak about it.

I've never met George. Likely he's a nice guy. But he's gotten under my skin for some time, along with the folks at Blue Oregon, who have also given him a good bye and good riddance sendoff.

What's amazing is that my local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal, called him a winner in an editorial today.

WINNER: George Taylor. As the leader of the Oregon Climate Service and the de facto state climatologist, his out-of-the-mainstream views on climate change attracted fans and foes. But he made people think. Now he has decided to retire.

Wrong. Taylor is a loser.

Because he didn't make people think about climate change. Quite the opposite – Taylor never provided any scientific evidence to back up his loony notions that humans aren't major causes of global warming, and that natural causes are the culprit.

So there was nothing to think about when Taylor spouted off on conservative talk radio, or web sites supported by the same oil company money that Taylor also took.

I'm pretty sure he's never published anything about climate change in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Yet somehow Taylor thinks he knows more than thousands of genuine climatologists whose research has resulted in a scientific consensus.

Taylor and his global warming-denying cronies like to portray him as a courageous maverick who has fallen victim to climate change groupthink. Not true.

He's simply wrong. Just as there are still people around who think the Earth is flat, and that the moon landings were faked. They aren't winners either. Like Taylor, they're wrong.

May George have a pleasant retirement, hopefully one which keeps him as far as possible from making any more erroneous pronouncements about climate change science.

As a memorial to how wrong Taylor has been, here are the posts that I've written about him.

February 20, 2008

Just what we needed – another engaging TV series that'll add to our backlog of unwatched DVR recordings. But we're hooked on HBO's "In Treatment."

My wife is a retired psychotherapist. So not surprisingly, Laurel finds watching Gabriel Byrne fascinating. He plays Paul Weston, a psychotherapist who acts like a traditional psychiatrist because he's so non-directive (he also seems semi-depressed).

But Weston must be something else, since he has plenty of time for his patients and doesn't whip out a prescription pad. So far, at least; we've only watched five of the forty-five episodes.

After my first viewing of "In Treatment" I thought it might be boring to spend 30 minutes listening to people talk about their problems. I've found that it isn't, something Laurel already knew, since she spent quite a few years doing just that – for real.

I bet this has happened to you. You're sitting around with some friends, chit-chatting about this and that. Safe topics. Politics. Weather. Sports. Family.

The evening wears on. People have an extra glass of wine. The mood loosens up. Finally someone blurts out, "Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I've got to get this off my chest. I need to tell someone."

Ooh! Some covers coming off a psyche's façade! Every head turns toward the revealer. Expectant. All ears. Raw honesty is about to supplant polite superficiality.

That's what I find fascinating about "In Treatment" – the ever-changing balance between telling it like it is, and how it isn't. Weston's patients struggle to find that balance. So does Weston himself, whose professional life and marriage have their own sore spots.

After each episode Laurel enjoys critiquing Weston's psychotherapeutic technique. He strikes her as overly passive, doing a lot more listening than talking.

These days insurance companies don't let therapists get away with lengthy non-directive counseling. You're supposed to get the problem dealt with in a few sessions, while Weston apparently has been seeing some of his patients for a long time.

But all in all "In Treatment" reflects the flavor of psychotherapy pretty well. If it didn't, Laurel would be saying much more often, "That's not real!" (one of her favorite critiques of TV shows or movies, whereas I enjoy a healthy dose of illusion in my escapism).

On the message board of one of my blogs someone recently posted Zen Sarcasm. One item says:

February 18, 2008

The Democratic Party of Oregon is about to get a new member. But party leaders shouldn't get too excited about my shift from "not a member of a party."

Here's why. I'm sending in my changed voter registration form tomorrow because I want to vote for Barack Obama in the primary on May 20. That's pretty much the only reason.

So if the Democratic Party superdelegates, who aren't so super, screw Obama out of the nomination even though he ends up with more pledged delegates, I'm back to unaffiliated.

Pronto.

A side benefit of registering as a Democrat is that I'll have a card capable of being sliced up into tiny pieces and mailed to the Democratic Party headquarters if Obama gets the raw end of back room deal-making.

February 16, 2008

Tucked into a story about a bill to let Oregon voters decide whether health care is a right was a stupendously ill-informed assertion by a Republican legislator that rights are god-given:

The vote was a victory for Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, the chairman of the House Health Care Committee who has trying for three years to help the uninsured.

During debate, Greenlick described how he would have lost his battle with lymphoma, now in remission, if he had not had health insurance. That so many suffer for lack of health care is unjust, he said.

"Rights are the products of wrongs; they come from human experience, particularly experience with injustice," he said.

But Rep. Scott Bruun, R-West Linn, said rights are God-given and "cannot be added to or detracted from by the whimsy of man." A long list of worthwhile ideals could be called rights, he said.

"Let's acknowledge health care is important," he said, "but it is not a right."

Rep. Bruun, thanks for showing why religion has no place in politics. This is one of my favorite subjects, which I blog about regularly over on my Church of the Churchless (here's an example).

How the heck is it possible to say that rights are god-given? For one thing, which god? Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist?

Every religion has its own conception of right and wrong. And of god.

If Rep. Bruun were Hindu, he might well be arguing that not killing animals for food is obviously a fundamental extra-human right, so vegetarianism should be favored by the body politic.

Further, even if we choose one religion over all the others (leaving aside the unconstitutionality of such an action), decisions have to made about which tenets of that faith should be accepted or rejected.

The Bible condones slavery and genocide, among other affronts to human dignity from our more enlightened 21st century perspective. How do we pick and choose among the many injunctions in the Old and New Testaments, many of them certifiably whacko?

So Rep. Greenlick is correct. Rights come from humans, not god. If Oregonians want health care to be a right, like education, voting to make it so is our right also.

February 14, 2008

It took me three "wrong's" because that's how many times I can recall being wrong recently. Actually, I'm sure the number is much more.

Like most people, I much prefer being right than wrong. So I tend to focus on experiences that affirm the correctness of my view of the world, and put out of mind the oops moments.

Still, sometimes even I can't ignore how amazingly wrong I can be. And how confident I am that I'm right until the curtain rises on the fantastic drama, My Error.

Last Monday I rushed into my Tai Chi class, customarily late, and sat down to hurriedly put on my lightweight shoes.

What the ____? The cozy confines of my Tai Chi shoe world had shattered. I had two different shoes – two sizes, two brands.

My brain struggled to figure out what had happened.

Then I remembered that in the previous class we'd talked about types of Tai Chi shoes. A woman had said that she liked her shoes. They were black with a silver "Turf" on the tongue, just like the smallish shoe that I was mysteriously holding.

It all became clear.

We must have taken off our shoes after class and put them next to each other. Then one of us had grabbed two shoes without looking and went home with them. She had one shoe of mine, and I had one of hers.

I spent a good share of the Tai Chi class pondering this. I wondered if she would remember to bring my shoe with her on Thursday, the only day she comes to class. I pictured her being as surprised to find a mismatched pair as I was. I visualized where we'd been sitting to accomplish the mix-up.

Except…when I got home a little "you're wrong" bell started ringing in my mind. It kept getting louder, drawing me to look on top of the box in my closet where I keep my Tai Chi shoes.

And there, tucked behind some clothes, barely visible, was another "Turf" shoe. I'd forgotten that I'd gotten a pair, just like the woman's, a couple of years ago. They were a bit too small, so I didn't wear them much, preferring the Tiger Claw shoes.

I'd mindlessly picked up one of each shoe somehow and mindlessly never noticed until I'd sat down to put them on. So here's one wrong.

Onto the next wrongs.

Two days later I installed some backup software for an external hard drive on my new Lenovo notebook computer. The installation and first backup seemed to go fine. But I decided to click on the "Computer" button in Vista to see if anything had changed on the Lenovo Y510.

What the ____? The cozy confines of my laptop world had shattered. Now there were two hard drives on the Lenovo, a small 29 GB "C" drive and a large 188 GB logical "D" drive/partition with nothing in it.

I got anxious. Years ago I'd had a problem with an earlier version of the same backup software. It has screwed things up on the computer I was trying to protect, paradoxically. I searched the Internet for mention of my current problem. Couldn't find anything.

I still fretted, though, until I could phone Lenovo tech support. Who told me, "That's the way the hard drive is supposed to be." Relief. I hadn't paid attention to the drive layout before, the computer being new and little used.

Once again I'd jumped to conclusions, figuring that I knew the cause of a problem. Once again I was wrong. In this case, there wasn't even much of a problem (I still want to get rid of the "D" partition, but not because there's anything horribly wrong).

Finally, last night we sat down for some TV watching. I grabbed the remote control, because that's my manly sacred right. The DISH satellite receiver turned on fine. The TV didn't.

What the ____? The cozy confines of my television world had shattered.

Blank screen. Just sound. At first I thought this would be easy to fix. A video cable connection must have loosened up when something got moved.

I re-plugged in everything that makes a picture on the TV. Still blank. I played a DVD. TV was fine. I reasoned the problem must be with the DISH receiver. I reset it. And reset it again.

I found some different "RCA" cables and substituted them for the possibly malfunctioning cables. I plugged them directly into the television, rather than going through a possibly malfunctioning selector box (to switch between a DVD player and DISH network).

Screen was still blank.

I was convinced the receiver had gone bad. I lamented the likely loss of all the recorded programs we had stored on it. The Lost episodes! The ballroom dance championship episodes! All those Stephen Colbert and Daily Show episodes we hadn't watched!

I started going through the stages of digital video recorder death. Anger. Despair. Sadness. I was nowhere near acceptance.

I dug out the DISH receiver manual and started going through it for clues to what had gone wrong with their piece of shit equipment that had turned my TV watching world upside down.

And came to a mention of the S-Video input and output. Which set off another "you're wrong" ringing in my psyche.

Because I'd noticed an unattached cable lying behind the TV set amid the spaghetti-like maze of other cables that, miraculously, allows our myriad electronic gadgets to communicate with each other.

Most of the time.

But somehow the S-Video input had gotten detached from the selector box. So even though a S-Video cable was coming out of the satellite receiver, and a S-Video cable was going into the TV set, a crucial missing link was unhooked, something I'd failed to notice.

Hooking the cable back up, all was well. Except I'd missed an hour of television viewing in my life that can never be recovered. Rebirth awaits to assuage that regret.

So that's my three "I'm wrong's." Three opportunities to reflect on how I can be equally sure I'm right about much bigger things in life.

Such as the meaning, or lack thereof, of it. If I can be wrong about little things, I can be wrong about big things. We all can.

February 12, 2008

I have a burgundy shirt that's close enough to red to count. But the Semi-Formal…that sent a chill up my causal Oregon spine.

I fretted and worried. I emailed Lora, one of the RJ Dance head honchos, and asked her what semi-formal meant. She didn't respond. I got chillier.

Turning to Wikipedia, I was told that semi-formal is synonymous with black tie. A dinner jacket would be most appropriate for evening wear.

Yeah, right. Hey, Wikipedia, I live in the northwest.

Your article may claim that semi-formal/black tie is similar to informal attire in European usage, but I can tell you that the same order of magnitude dressing difference (in the other direction) applies in Oregon, Washington, and other parts of Ecotopia.

So I didn't panic. Before last night's foxtrot class I asked Lora what she meant by semi-formal. "Oh, no blue jeans or t-shirts. Especially with holes in them. Otherwise, anything goes."

Yes! I'd been worrying that I'd have to dig out a suit and tie, which I haven't worn in many years – since my daughter's wedding, I'm pretty sure.

But now I had free rein to embrace a natural northwest dress code, which turns out to be virtually identical to the geek version of the rest of the world's dress code.

Namely, semi-formal means nice pants and nice shirt – not a dark suit and tie. This extended description of the geek dress code says that for women, semi-formal means a dress or skirt, maybe black in a nice fabric with a dressy top.

Here's the result of our semi-formal dressing labors tonight. RJ kindly captured us after some semi-sweaty dancing.

February 10, 2008

Politics always is crazy. But the way the Democratic Party is choosing it's presidential candidate – that's beyond crazy.

I know, because I'm being driven insane trying to figure out what the delegate count is between Obama and Clinton. Obama's my man, so I'm pumped by how well he's done in the most recent primary contests.

But when I check CNN's Election Center just now, oh no!, I see in a big bold-face font that Clinton is still leading Obama, 1148 to 1121. (This even includes today's Maine results.)

Then I read the fine print breakdown. And see that actually Obama has 986 pledged delegates and Clinton 924. Clinton leads only in superdelegates, 224 to 135.

Who aren't at all "super."

They're Democratic Party functionaries. They can change their mind at any moment. And their preference for president shouldn't get more play in the press than the votes of more than 14 million people who have participated in Democratic primaries and caucuses so far.

Yet many news organizations include some of the 797 superdelegates in delegate totals for Clinton and Obama. CNN tallies 359. A week or so ago the NY Times had deduced the preference of 303.

I wish these not-so-superdelegates would shut their mouths for the moment. Every single one should be saying, "I've haven't made my mind up yet."

Because these unpledged delegates aren't supposed to be deciding who's going to be the Democratic candidate come November. Their job is to give the frontrunner, after all the primaries are over, a clear cut margin of victory at the convention.

At least, that's the informed opinion of Tad Devine, Walter Mondale's delegate counter in 1984, who says "Superdelegates, Back Off."

The superdelegates were never intended to be part of the dash from Iowa to Super Tuesday and beyond. They should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.

The party's leaders and elected officials need to stop pledging themselves to either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, the two remarkable candidates who are locked in an intense battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If the superdelegates determine the party's nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don't count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come.

Absolutely. I heard Obama say that whoever is ahead in delegates after June 7, when the last primary is held, should get the votes of the superdelegates.

Makes great sense.

As Devine says, the last thing the Democratic Party needs is a drawn-out nominating process that drags into the convention, where the country would be "treated" to (or disgusted by) the sight of back room deals harking back to my memories of how candidates were selected in the not-so-good-old days of the 60's and 70's.

What's bizarre about all this is that the Democratic primaries assign delegates proportionally, which is wonderfully, well, democratic. Every vote counts, in contrast to a winner-take-all approach where the preference of 49.9% of voters can be ignored.

Yet the superdelegates have the power to ignore not the will of a minority, but the majority.

Millions upon millions of fired-up Obama supporters could put him clearly in the delegate lead on June 7, but lacking the few delegates he needs to win the nomination outright.

It'd be a travesty, shades of the Supreme Court giving the presidency to George Bush in 2000, if a few hundred politicos overturned the will of millions of primary voters and caucus goers.

(On the delegate tracking front, the Obama campaign has a clearly laid out Results Center. It seems accurate and dare I say it, conservative, since so far the states who voted on February 9 and 10, all Obama victories, haven't been factored in. It has: Obama 910, Clinton 882.

A Daily Kos diary today did a yeoman's job of assembling delegate counts from major news organizations and factoring them into a up to date consensus estimate. Bottom line: Obama 1028, Clinton 948.)

February 08, 2008

But I'm married to a (retired) psychotherapist, so it'll be easy to get treatment for Post Fairy Disillusionment Disorder if the shock of last week doesn't fade away.

The interesting thing is, my potential therapist is closely connected with my trauma. This could produce some sort of transference issues, but that's the least of my worries right now.

Because what I'm trying to deal with is a wholesale upsetting of my world view – as it pertains to our household, at least. I've having to adjust to losing a deeply held faith.

In the Chore Fairy.

I'll get a head start on recovery by sharing my story. I'll imagine that we're sitting in a circle and my turn comes to talk. "Hi, I'm Brian, and I used to be addicted to my belief."

Which wasn't based on nothing. I had good reasons for it.

I've been married to Laurel for almost eighteen years. Almost every day, and you can do the math to figure out how many thousands of them there have been, I'd get out of bed in the morning and go about my business.

Sometime later, the bed would be made. I never was sure how.

I'd make coffee, let the dog out, get the newspaper, go have some meditation quiet time, eat breakfast, take a shower – and eventually when I'd walk back in the bedroom, presto, the bed would be all neat and tidy. Never caught anyone in the act of arranging the sheets and bedspread.

So I started to figure it must be the Chore Fairy.

It made me happy to visualize her under the bed, or maybe peeking out from the closet, waiting for me to leave the room so she could do her thing in private (everybody knows fairies are shy; that's why we never see them).

Eventually I began to realize that the Chore Fairy was up to more than making the bed. She was doing a whole lot of other things to make life easier for me.

Consider toilet paper. I'd buy it at the store and bring it home. But I'd never put any rolls under the bathroom sinks. Yet when I needed a fresh roll, there one would be!

Amazing. Mysterious. Marvelous. As the years went by my adoration for the Chore Fairy grew. I became more attuned to recognizing her unseen presence.

Often I'd notice that the dishwasher "clean" light was on, but I wouldn't have time to attend to it, having a lot of important items on my to-do list, like checking out my blog statistics and putting my own name into Google to see how I was stacking up with the other Brian Hines' of the world.

After a while I'd tear myself away from my laptop, walk upstairs, and oh my god thank you Chore Fairy! I'd go into the kitchen to find a snack and see that the light was off and the dishwasher was empty.

I'd grab a clean plate, pop some leftover spaghetti into the microwave, and say another silent "thank you" to the Chore Fairy, who clearly was the most dependable friend a guy could have.

When Laurel left last Friday for a weeklong trip to Florida, I was looking forward to having some alone time with the Chore Fairy. Maybe, I thought, her shyness was due to my wife, not me. This could be my chance to finally see her perform her magic.

Things didn't work out like I expected, though – right from the beginning. By Friday afternoon I figured that the Chore Fairy should have the bed made. But no, it looked just the same.

A day later, ditto. Worse, not only was the dishwasher still full of clean dishes, after I emptied it myself (muttering "Where the [email protected]#$& are you, Chore Fairy?") it wasn't being filled with dirty dishes from the sink per usual.

Nor were spots on the kitchen floor from food that I'd dropped disappearing after a few hours, as had always happened before. I became aware that the Chore Fairy was shirking a whole lot of her duties.

And that began to piss me off. All these years I'd venerated the Chore Fairy; I'd appreciated how much she did for me. Not in words, of course not – that'd be crazy.

The Chore Fairy knew how I felt. I was sure of it. Since her magical powers could clean things up around the house without me seeing her do it, surely she was aware of how much I cared for her.

But now she'd left me. In the lurch. When I needed her most.

Because I had extra duties with Laurel being gone – taking the dog for a morning walk, feeding the birds, putting the family pet to bed with some baby talk and a couple of biscuits – yet the Chore Fairy wasn't even doing what she usually does.

It was pretty damn traumatic, to have our relationship come to such a screeching halt. And the Chore Fairy chose the exact same day Laurel left to say Sayonara to me. I hated her. For the whole week.

But now things are better again between us. Laurel got back last night. And today I noticed that the Chore Fairy was back on the job.

Guess she needed some space. Can't figure out what I did to drive her away, though. Or why she decided to return when Laurel did.

Oh, jeez. It's becoming clear now. I've been such a fool!

The Chore Fairy loves Laurel more than me. She must have snuck into Laurel's suitcase when she packed and hitched a ride to Florida.

Well, that sucks. I've got to get me a Chore Fairy trap so I can keep her here next time Laurel goes away. Must be something like that on the Internet. Off to Google…

February 06, 2008

It'd be amusing, if the issues weren't so serious, how Measure 37 supporters are acting so offended becauseOregonians approved Measure 49 last November.

Oh my god! It's unfair! The voters changed Oregon's land use laws!

Cry me a river. But don't expect me to feel sorry for you. Don't you see how hypocritical all this bemoaning is?

Many thousands of Oregonians, including neighbors of ours, figured that when they bought land to build a house the zoning of surrounding acreages wouldn't be changed willy-nilly.

For example, if a large tract of farm land was next door, they expected that it would stay as EFU (exclusive farm use) unless an open and fair rezoning process was followed.

But along came Measure 37 in 2004. Now there was a special privileged class of landowners: people who could ignore land use laws because they owned property before the laws went into effect.

This was like allowing those who owned a car before a lower speed limit went into effect to drive as fast as before, while everybody else had to obey the new law.

When the speeders started to have lots of crashes, you'd expect there would be a push to have all drivers follow the same rules, by and large.

And that's what happened with Measure 49.

It went a long way toward restoring fairness to Oregon's land use system. Now only three home sites can be on a Measure 37 claim that consists of farm, forest, or groundwater limited land.

Neighbors of the claim have had their property rights restored, because now there's a balanced process to guide development instead of giving free rein to large subdivisions to pave over irreplaceable resource land.

Change happens. Democracy happens. The same people complaining about the changes Measure 49 has brought about were happy when Measure 37's changes were approved.

Come on, guys. You can't say "we don't want to be bound by Measure 49" when you were pleased to follow Measure 37. A law is a law. Deal with it.

During its February session, the legislature should make an effort to repair the injustice created by the passage of Measure 49, at least where it affects private individuals.

These are the people who assumed that Measure 37 on land-use claims, passed in 2004, was the law, especially since the Supreme Court upheld it in 2006, and who therefore filed applications and went through a lengthy process to claim the waivers the measure allowed.

Earth to Democrat Herald: After 1973 people assumed that SB 100, which established Oregon's pioneering land use system, was the law. There were several attempts to change it. They failed. It was still the law.

Then Measure 37 came along and the law changed. Now, Measure 49 has changed the law again. In a democracy you shouldn't expect that a law will stay the same forever.

Here's some testimony along this line that I presented to the legislature's Land Use Fairness Committee last year. I make wonderful sense.

February 04, 2008

Given the self-referential nature of the blogosphere, it seems obligatory for me to put up a blog post about a blog post milestone – namely, TypePad having informed me that today HinesSight passed the one million page view milestone.

Congratulations to me, from me.

However, the question to me, from me, is "so what?" A embarrassingly high proportion of those 1,000,114 page views came from people looking for photos of Paris Hilton.

So whoop-de-do, I'm serving humanity by including some photos from other web sites that got ranked high on a Google Images search for "Paris Hilton," thereby generating thousands of page views a day for a while.

Even though I called my all-time most popular post "The Tao of Paris Hilton," I have a suspicion that visitors to my blog were more interested in her physical attributes than the deep philosophical implications of her seeming vacuousness.

Still, a million page views for any reason is cool. And many of my posts lie higher on the social value scale that my Paris Hilton musings.

Since I dashed off this expose of a mailing that tries to con corporations (non-profits included) into forking over $95 to $125 for submitting annual meeting minutes that don't need submitting, I've gotten almost three hundred comments from people who are thankful that a Google search turned up my post and saved them the money.

I figure that I helped these folks alone save over $30,000. And this doesn't include all the others who learned about the scam and didn't leave a comment.

In the end, blogging isn't about numbers. It's saying what you want to say, whether or not anybody pays attention.

Three years ago, this guy estimated that of five million or so active bloggers, 100 averaged 150,000 hits daily per blog; 2,000 averaged 1,500 daily hits; and 18,000 averaged 500 daily hits.

The rest were virtually hitless. But the way I see it, how many people does it take to have a great conversation with? Answer: one.

And that person could be me. So I'm pleased to consistently get over 600 page views a day on this blog – now without much help from the Paris Hilton post.

The most satisfying emails and comments I get, though, come one at a time. Whether it's a "thank you" or "you're an idiot," I know that I've made contact with someone.

February 01, 2008

I'm pleased to see that Oregonian columnist Steve Duin is still firing bulls eyes at an admittedly easy target: how the Oregon DEQ looks the other way when well-heeled permit violators run afoul of environmental rules.

You'd think that by now either the agency would be tired of choking on its failure to protect Oregon, or someone else (governor, legislature) would be forcing DEQ to stop looking the other way when big business ignores environmental regulations.

But no, even though contaminated water from a landfill is flowing into the Tualatin River, DEQ's solution is to request that the polluter pay $795 for a permit. Case closed.

This would be disgusting, but not surprising, in New Jersey. I know, because I've watched every season of The Sopranos. In supposedly squeaky clean and green Oregon, though, it's disconcerting when a state agency bends over backwards for the companies it's supposed to be regulating.

In my fight against a DEQ scofflaw, the agency finally did revoke a 1200-C erosion/storm water control permit. However, the only penalty for the applicant was waiting a while to get another permit.

I'd sent DEQ evidence that the applicant, a Measure 37 claimant seeking to build a subdivision, had violated the permit requirements and presented false information on the permit application.

DEQ's own administrative rules say that these are "no-no's." But with DEQ, almost everything a permit violator does is a "yes-yes." As in, yes, you broke the rules, and yes, we'll let you off the hook for doing so.

This reminds me of a policeman catching someone driving drunk dangerously without a license, who he then escorts to a DMV office so they can get legal. Case closed.

This state can do a heck of a lot better. Mark Riskedahl of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center says that a big step toward a solution to DEQ's lax enforcement is hiring a new agency director with a get-tough attitude.